Friday, September 14, 2007

Vanity Plates of the 21st Century

Shortly out of film school, I was working as an electrician on a movie that was being shot in my hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Most of the crew was from Los Angeles. I struck up a friendship with one of the electricians from L.A.

I don't believe he had ever spent a great deal of time in the Midwest. One of his observations was the abundance of vanity plates.

The first license plate I had was a vanity plate. No, it wasn't my name, nor was it "Splotchy" or any derivation thereof. It was a common word that I just happened to be fond of at the time. Guess what the word was if you care to (hint: it foreshadowed my career in computer programming).

Currently I read a variety of people's blogs, and a variety of people read mine. To the best of my knowledge, the blogs I read are in the Midwest, with a few on the east coast.

Blogs seem to have a tendency to clump together, aligning themselves along lines of similar interests, political beliefs, etc. I imagine geographic region also plays a part in this interblog stickiness as well. Still, I find it curious that that in the months I have been relatively active in the blogosphere, to my knowledge I haven't come across any west coast bloggers.

Is there a connection between the perceived prevalence of Midwestern vanity plates to a visiting Californian, and my perception of the overwhelming number of blogs in the Midwest region?

Vanity plates are essentially a very tiny expression of one's identity, set adrift in the "autosphere" of anonymous license plates. Blogs to me in some ways seem to be a very elaborate vanity plate.